Godzilla Minus Zero Review: Intense and Visually Stunning Action Make For Worthy Sequel
Director Takashi Yamazaki returns for another large scale monster film in Godzilla Minus Zero, the long-anticipated sequel to 2023's Godzilla Minus One.
Synopsis:
"War reduced Japan to zero, and Godzilla plunged it into minus. Two years have passed since then, and the country has faced agonizing struggles to achieve recovery and finally reclaim its daily life. Just as humanity managed to cling to a hard-won peace, a new threat strikes, crushing hope in an instant. There is no third time. Everything ends here."
Cast:
Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Jun Kunimura
Release Date:
In Theaters Now
Incredible Large-Scale Action Sequences
One of my largest film regrets over the past half decade has been not catching Godzilla Minus One in theaters and having that experience for this film just emphasized that by a million. This is the one area where the sequel is clearly better then its predecessor, as they clearly got a budget bump and were able to go all out on an already good set of action. Although there is a lot of grounded sequences of our characters composing their plans to take on the giant, the main draw is always going to be the sprawling fight sequences and those absolutely won't disappoint. I think the best thing this franchise has done in these two movies is their use of sound and score alongside these scenes. Obviously the effects are on another level and that's necessary, but the sound of a Godzilla blast is genuinely terrifying. A lot of the time we are seeing the action from the perspective of our human characters and that's such a rich directorial choice from Yamazaki. Every single time Godzilla is on screen things will feel incredibly tense and just simply epic.
One thing that I didn't know going into this one, but I now know has been in the promo, was the introduction of Ghidorah as another antagonist. I had a vague knowledge of this creature from the Monsterverse films, but what Yamazaki did with it was haunting. Ghidorah's power set is a stark contrast to Godzilla and they establish that fact right off the bat with the first sequence. Again, these scenes are genuinely terrifying but you also can't look away because of how creative and visually stunning they are. Ghidorah's role in the story also allows for an incredibly bold swing that really worked for me - making Godzilla somebody you root for. I'm not going to spoil any third act stuff, but it really shifts the perspective on Godzilla and his role in the story.
Returning Characters Joined By New Faces
One of the great bits of news about this sequel is that virtually every character from the previous film comes back in a sizable way. Ryunosuke Kamiki returns as the scrappy fighter pilot who is essentially a war hero after the events of the first film. He's trying his best to live a happy life with his wife Noriko, played by Minami Hamabe, while also seeing things start to go bad to worse around him. His whole arc there was fascinating and I also loved seeing Hamabe take a bit more of a central role this time around. This film directly addresses the cliffhanger with her in Minus One, as well as making her family the central emotional arc of the film. The ending will absolutely crush you because of how invested you are in their story from start to finish. The other standout has to be Hidetaka Yoshioka's Dr Noda, who will be just as much of a fan favorite as he is in Minus One. They give him a lot of deeply emotional material here and I loved seeing him be challenged as an actor. You genuinely do feel invested in this world throughout and I really enjoyed seeing how all the characters fit back into the story after the events of the first film.
On top of these great returning characters, we also get some fascinating new ones. The one that comes to mind instantly is Min Tanaka in somewhat of a mad scientist role. The technology that he founds is very essential to the main plot and becomes a very huge part of the third act. But even beyond that, they use him to explore a dark part of the world's history. He's dealing with an immense amount of trauma and you can see it build up slowly throughout the entire film. However, by the end, his arc is well and truly satisfying. Masami Nagasawa plays a weather tracker in a role that definitely had me rolling my eyes when I first heard about it, but eventually became one of my favorite characters in the film. The idea of a weather-woman helping with Godzilla may seem a bit silly, but definitely feels on brand for this IP and her tracking becomes a really engaging part of the film. Not only that, but we get to explore a lot of her past trauma as well. Her and Dr. Noda have a really great relationship arc in the film, which will leave you devastated by the end.
Violence Toned Up
This film upped from PG-13 to an R Rating from the first and it is pretty easy to see why. On the surface the film is just generally more violent, with lots of blood and guts throughout. However, where it really plays in is with the traumatic sequences. The film is a parallel to a lot of real life events and you see that at many times in the project - with one standout being a POV shot of a doctor walking through a post-war hospital. That wartime trauma is echoed through a lot of our characters and especially Tanaka. Even beyond that, all of the Ghidorah sequences are shot in a way that are genuinely horrible to witness. Not having to hold back in any way allowed Yamazaki to go as traumatic as possible. Even the scene from the photo above is incredibly unexpected and plays back into some of the large connections to real life events. I would definitely love to see another film explore it in a larger way, but they directly address the political relationship between our characters and many other countries. It's a very small part of the story, but is a backdrop that is hanging above our characters the whole film and adds to how horrifically violent the situation is.
Plot Is Lacking
One of the things that makes Godzilla MInus One legendary to me is that the human plot is somehow just as good as the action sequences. This is something the Monsterverse movies really struggle with for me and I thought Yamazaki was really able to nail it. Unfortunately, I don't think this sequel was able to share that positive. The general plot feels very slow and somewhat boring compared to the action sequences. Not that I want the movie to be all action, but they didn't really make the grounded scenes interesting enough to hold us off between the large-scale events. The film is very slow between Acts 1-2, with the planning the characters are doing just not really keeping me invested the whole time. I like the characters and their relationships, but it kind of feels like the movie is just dragging after a few of the Ghidorah scenes. This negative also made it slightly harder for me to get invested in what is a really well composed third act. Although I loved it, I wasn't as invested in some of the arcs as I wanted to be. This film really wasn't able to balance its plot with the action and it just makes it so its a clear step below the first film.
Final Thoughts
This film is wildly entertaining and absolutley worth a watch on the biggest screen possible. It's not without problems in the plot and story, but that may not bother others as much as it did for me. I would love to see Yamazaki helm more films in this franchise!
Rating: 4/5 Stars
Godzilla Minus Zero is ranked 25th out of the 96 new releases I've seen this year.
Editor's Note: I've only included the top 20 from my 2026 new releases list, for editing purposes.
2026 Ranked:
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